The government is warning of a “grim” September with up to 6,000 jobs set to be cut across the steel and oil refining industries, the BBC understands.

A total of 2,800 jobs are set to go at Port Talbot in Wales, while up to 3,000 jobs are expected to be axed at British Steel in Scunthorpe. A further 400 will be cut at Scotland’s Grangemouth oil refinery.

Unions’ hopes that investment from a new Labour government could help limit job losses have largely been dashed, according to sources.

The government said it was facing “tough decisions” but added: “The solution isn’t writing a blank cheque to bail out the past, or to put taxpayers on the hook for the industrial challenges we’ve inherited.”

Labour’s manifesto promised a kitty of £2.5bn to revitalise the UK steel industry.

But the new government has taken a similar line to its predecessor by insisting that public money is only available to invest in new greener steel production facilities, rather than to subsidise large ongoing losses at carbon-intensive plants.

Both Tata, the Indian firm which owns Port Talbot and Jingye of China, which owns Scunthorpe, insist the plants are losing £1m a day.

The government is in talks to finalise a grant to Tata of £500m towards the £1.25bn cost of building an electric arc furnace which will eventually replace the last remaining blast furnace at Port Talbot.

Blast furnaces use coke in the process of creating “virgin” steel but the process generates carbon dioxide while electric arc furnaces are mostly used to melt down and repurpose scrap steel.

This process cannot replicate all grades of steel that are produced in blast furnaces, including some types used in construction and rail.

At Port Talbot, the GMB and Community unions have presented members with a redundancy deal struck with Tata which would see workers receive 2.8 weeks of earnings for every year of service up to a maximum of 25 years.

Workers can also sign up to a one-year skills and re-training scheme during which they will be paid £27,000.

Union officials hope the number of immediate compulsory redundancies at the UK’s biggest steel works will end up being far lower than 2,800 as many workers who left recently have not been replaced. There have been more than 2,000 expressions of interest in the redundancy and re-training package being offered.

In Scunthorpe, prospects for workers have deteriorated more suddenly.

Unions had hoped that a government support package of up to £600m to Jingye would see one of its remaining blast furnaces remain open during the three years it took to build a new electric arc furnace.

That prospect has faded, according to union and government sources, meaning that up to 3,000 jobs could go.

Asked how the government felt about the next few weeks, a senior source said: “It’s going to feel grim.”

Unions have told the BBC that the closure of blast furnaces at both Port Talbot and Scunthorpe would leave the UK without the ability to make virgin steel.

But other industry voices have downplayed such vulnerabilities, pointing out that the coking coal and iron ore used in blast furnaces are imported from abroad, so importing some virgin steel would make little difference.

Meanwhile, an announcement is expected this month to confirm that Scotland’s only remaining oil refinery at Grangemouth will shut down early next year to become a less labour-intensive oil and gas import terminal.

Government promises to explore a sustainable future for the site based on the planned expansion of renewable energy in Scotland are not expected to come soon enough to save up to 400 jobs.

A government spokesman said: “Decarbonisation does not mean deindustrialisation and government will continue working in partnership with trade unions and business to support good, stable jobs and deliver economic growth.”

A spokesperson for British Steel in Scunthorpe said bosses were in “ongoing discussions” with the government over its future operations.

“While progress continues, no final decisions have been made,” they added.

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The US Department of Justice accused Google of running a massive ad tech monopoly that cut off potential rivals and drove up costs for publishers and advertisers in an attempt to maximise profits, as the latest antitrust trial against Big Tech got under way on Monday.

“No one wins” — except Google, a lawyer for the DoJ, Julia Tarver Wood, said during her opening statement in a federal court in Virginia.

The trial comes just weeks after a judge in Washington issued a landmark verdict in another DoJ antitrust case against Google, finding it had monopolised the market for online search. A decision on how to punish Google is expected next year.

Both cases are part of a growing push to rein in the power of Big Tech by antitrust enforcers in Washington, who have brought sweeping cases challenging the market power of the likes of Amazon, Meta and Apple.

The government’s current case against Google strikes at the heart of the lucrative business to display online ads such as the ones at the top or side of a screen. The DoJ, along with 17 states, argued in the lawsuit that Google dominates that business — from publishers that sell ads to the advertisers that create them — and the platform that matches the two sides. 

The DoJ said Google’s cut can be 37 cents of every advertising dollar when it matches buyers and sellers, and said it controls a roughly 90 per cent share of the markets for ad servers and advertiser networks worldwide.

Google has argued in response that it does not have a monopoly and instead offers a superior product in a highly competitive market. Karen Dunn, who represented Google, said the company has transformed the ad tech market, competes “millisecond by millisecond” for every ad impression against an array of other companies, and “grew the pie” for all businesses in the sector over the past two decades through its innovation.

Dunn repeatedly charged that the government did not understand the business — and it cannot compel the company to give its tech to competitors. The government’s case against Google is based on analysis “that is not commercial reality” and “made up” for the purpose of litigation, she said.

She said Google would offer as witnesses the company’s engineers and designers, as well as government officials at the US Census and US military veterans, who used Google for recruitment and suicide prevention advertising.

Ultimately, Dunn argued it was not publishers, advertisers or customers who would benefit if Google lost, but the tech giant’s major competitors who have gained market share: Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and TikTok. She added the case was also backwards-looking, given the rapidly evolving nature of artificial intelligence.

The US government was looking “through the lens of ancient history”, said Dunn, a partner at Paul Weiss. She was also expected to help Democratic vice-president and presidential candidate Kamala Harris prepare for Tuesday’s presidential debate.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, 80, who was appointed to the bench by then-president Bill Clinton, will decide the case after the conclusion of the trial, which is expected to last for several weeks.

Additional reporting by Stephen Morris and Stefania Palma